WHAT IS FERTILISER ? & Why do we need Fertilizer?

WHAT IS FERTILISER ?

Fertilisers are plant nutrients . Nutrients existing naturally in the soil, atmosphere, and in animal manure. However, naturally occurring nutrients are not always available in the forms that plants can use, or in the quantities needed. So we add to them by applying fertiliser, to make plants grow to their maximum potential.
Fertilisers can be classified into two categories: organic or inorganic.
Organic fertilisers are derived from living or once-living material, including animal wastes, crop residues, compost and numerous other by-products of living organisms.
Inorganic fertilisers are derived from non-living sources and include most of our man-made, commercial fertilisers. Man-made and natural fertilisers contain the same elements, but man-made fertilisers act more quickly .

Why do we need Fertilizer?

Often, the soil doesn't hold enough of these nutrients in the quantities needed for desirable growth and production.
An element is considered essential if in its absence plant growth and reproduction is significantly hindered.
The nutrients, that are in the soil, are often used up and need to be replaced. Therefore, we need to add extra plant nutrients to obtain maximum plant performance.

Plant hormones -Technique

Plant hormones, are specialised chemical substances produced by plants. Foliar fertilization is a particularly useful technique: and are the main internal factors controlling growth and development.
Hormones are produced in one part of a plant and transported to others, where they are effective in very small amounts.
Depending on the target tissue, a given hormone may have different effects.
Auxin, one of the most important plant hormones, is produced by growing stem tips and transported to other areas where it may either promote growth or inhibit it.
It also retards the abscission (dropping off) of flowers, fruits, and leaves.
Commercially, synthetic auxins are used to initiate adventitous roots from plant cuttings eg. in nurseries.
Weed control by another synthetic auxin, 2, 4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D), is widespread as a selective herbicide against broadleaf weeds.

FOLIAR FERTILIZER IS A PARTICULARLY USEFULL TECHNIQUE

Certain soil conditions, such as pH, excess moisture, or cool temperatures, may render a nutrient or nutrients unavailable to the plant root.
Nutrient demand curves indicate that there are stages in a plant's life-cycle when demand for some nutrients may be greater than its physiological capacity to supply itself, even when these soil nutrients are available in abundant supply. This often occurs during the development of fruit or grain.
Data from trials on crops, show that increases in yield and/or grade results from applications of foliar nutrients during these periods of peak demand.
Foliar fertilizers can be designed to meet a plant’s specific needs for one or more micro and macro nutrients--especially trace minerals and enables you to correct deficiencies, strengthen weak or damaged crops, speed growth and grow better plants, which is of course, the bottom line.
Foliar applications can be targeted to a particular stage of crop development to achieve specific objectives and is an excellent way to "fine tune" a high fertility program.

What Is Foliar Fertiliser

Foliar fertilisation is any fertilising substance applied in a liquid form.
Foliars in their most basic form, often used by home gardeners use animal manures, or seaweed collected from the beach, suspended in water, until all the 'goodness' has been extracted.
This is time consuming where a lot of effort is required for a small amount of nutrient.
By contrast, modern foliar fertilizers are concentrated solutions using very high grade technical elements, in which the nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium are combined to the desired ratio in a controlled environment.
The fertilising elements in this method are true solutions, soluble, and thus very plant available.
This is in contrast to soil applied (solid) fertilizer, which is applied as a powder or granules to the soil in dry form. This then, has to be dissolved, by moisture (rain) to be plant available via the roots. In other words, it has to dissolve into the soil solution to be available.
To these foliar solutions, trace elements in the form of chelates are added, along with seaweed and /or humic acid, or other additives depending on preference, to give a balanced fertilizer, supplying not only NPK, but all the trace elements as well as growth hormones, vitamins etc.
Many different NPK formulation combinations can be made, depending on the application required. The same elements that make up foliar fertilizer are required for plant growth and development, and are formulated to meet quite specific plant requirements.

The Importance of Organic Matter &Effect of Management Practices on Soil Organic Matter

The importance of organic matter in soil is not a recent discovery. Soil fertility in early agricultural systems was based on the recycling of organic wastes. The addition of decomposed organic materials improved plant growth.
Besides being a source of nutrients for the plant, organic matter has a fundamental effect on the physical properties of the soil (water-holding capacity) and determines to a large degree such properties as the exchange capacity and buffering properties. These properties are of great importance, not only in controlling the uptake of nutrients by the plant and their retention in the soil, but also in suppressing the deleterious effect of soil acidity.

Effect of Management Practices on Soil Organic Matter.

Cultivation of soils usually causes a decrease in the organic matter content. For most soils, a high level of organic matter is maintained only by grass species. Conventional sources of applied organic matter such as farm manures or crop residues are not normally used due to lack of availability or prohibitive cost.

Non-conventional Sources of Organic Matter:
Humate products for agricultural use are produced through mineral sand mining. The end product contains a majority of organic material (concentrated humic acid ) mixed with smaller amounts of mineral matter.
Humate concentrates provide many of the advantages of conventional organic matter sources with less handling problems, especially in situations where there is no feasible alternative to purchasing additional supplies of humus.
They have been demonstrated to have favourable effects on tissue nutrient balance, fertilizer uptake, top and root growth, crop yield and quality for a large variety of field and horticultural plants.
Here we get help of new and high tech products . If we defined humus as the base of fertility, we can define these high tech products as a concentrate of vital strength of humus, produced by nature during evolution.
The importance of organic matter in soil cannot be over emphasized. Soil life depends in large part on organic matter.
The bacterial, earthworms, fungi, actinomycetes and nematodes all in some way depend on organic matter.

HUMUS - AGROFERTILIZER INDUSTRY

Try planting seeds in pure clay retrieved from the bottom of a metre deep hole. There is no plant growth here, no matter how much N-P-K is applied. It is not possible to grow a crop in soil in the complete absence of organic carbon (humus).
In the production of a fertile soil, organic substances play a direct part as they are the sources of plant nutrients which are liberated in available forms during mineralisation.
The rise in popularity and use of mineral fertilisers enabled growers to directly supply plant nutrients to the soil, and rapid growth in agricultural productivity occurred. As a consequence, the importance of soil organic matter was somewhat neglected.
Humus is a structureless colloidal material resulting from the decomposition (humification) of any type of dead organic matter (mostly plant residues and animal remains).
It is a complex mixture including proteins, lignin (plant cell walls); fats, carbohydrates, and organic acids. These acids, humic acids and chelates, provide a storehouse of essential plant nutrients.
It helps make some nutrients more soluble and available to plants. It provides a high water absorption and holding capacity and contributes to good soil structure. It buffers the soil and protects plants from drastic changes in pH.
Humus and soil life work together for plants benefits.
Organic carbon is created from the breakdown of organic matter (usually in the form of crop residues) by bacteria and fungi. The conversion and availability of all mineral elements are related to, and regulated by this system of decay in the soil.
This is the environment necessary for the decomposing micro-organisms to flourish. Crop residues are converted into carbon dioxide, carbonic acid and numerous mild organic acids. These acids, stored in the humus complex, are necessary to convert, chelate, and release soil minerals.
Everyone knows that plant needs light, heat and moisture, as well as good fertile soil with the whole set of macro and micro elements to flourish.
But the real problem is that assimilation of those elements is impossible without some special organic substance, which is called "humus".
The main compound of humus are humic acids; which have originated during the decomposition of plant and animal residues by microorganisms, under aerobic and anaerobic conditions, usually in soils, composts, peat bogs, and water basins.

SEAWEED

A truly remarkable phenomenon is that seaweeds grow in the ocean and accumulates potassium but does not accumulate sodium.
The concentration of sodium in sea water is nearly a hundred times the concentration of potassium; yet potassium is accumulated, and sodium is excluded by the seaweed.
Liquid Seaweed is essentially an organic seaweed tea. It is sold as an extract which is diluted with water and applied to the soil, or most effectively used as a foliar spray.
Seaweed has been used by plant growers for centuries, but beneficial results has only recently been attributed to the naturally occurring growth regulators and micronutrients in the seaweed.
After years of research it has been established that seaweeds contain many naturally occurring plant growth regulators, namely cytokinins, gibberellins, and indoles.
In addition, it contains micronutrients such as iron, copper, zinc, molybdenum, boron,manganese, and cobalt.
To date more than 60 different types of nutrients have been confirmed.
However seaweed in itself is not a plant food, rather it is classified as a "bio-stimulant."
Many seaweed products also contain a chelating compound known as mannitol,which chelates micronutrients into forms that are readily available for plant use.
Seaweed contains several chelating agents the most important of which is mannitol.
Seaweed contains natural plant growth regulators. The major plant growth regulator are auxins, cytokinins, indoles and hormones. These are in very small quantities generally measured in parts per million.
Seaweed stimulates beneficial soil microbial activity, particularly in soil around the feeder roots resulting in a substantially larger root mass where the beneficial fungi and bacteria known as "mycorrhizae" exist.
This area of the soil is known as the "rhizosphere." The rhizosphere activity improves the plants ability to form healthier, stronger roots.
Cytokinins are hormones that promote growth by speeding up the process of cell division making seaweed extract of value in treating tissue cultures.
When they are applied to foliage the leaves rejuvenate stimulating photosynthesis.
Auxins, also hormones, occur in the roots and stems during cell division. They move to areas of cell elongation where they allow the walls of cells to stretch.
Auxins actually give fruits and vegetables a naturally longer shelf life. This is known as delaying senescense: the deterioration of cells and tissues that results in rotting.
Gibberellins are other important plant-growth hormones; more than 50 kinds are known. They control the elongation of stems, and they cause the germination of some grass seeds by initiating the production of enzymes that break down starch into sugars to nourish the plant embryo.
Hundreds of research reports have been written about seaweed and the micronutrients and growth regulators contained within them.
There are various methods used to identify the individual organic and inorganic compounds present in seaweed.
Without identifying individual compounds, scientists can test for responses in plant material which resemble the responses of plants to known individual compounds, such as cytokinins, auxins and gibberellins, through the use of bio-assays.
Farmers and gardeners should not become too involved in the science of why seaweed produces the results which have been demonstrated over decades of scientific research, field observations, and practical experience.
Rather, they should concentrate on the benefits and results of using seaweed products in their homes, gardens, and fields.
In recent years the results of scientific research provided evidence that seaweeds contain more than 70 microelements and is considerably higher than it is in terrestrial plants.
Plants use tiny amounts of the micronutrients often measured in parts per million.
This helps to explain why foliar spraying can be an effective way to deliver these nutrients to the plant. Seaweeds are found in all of the oceans except for the tropical western coast of Africa and western Central America.